Elsie could have untied that rune with a sneeze. Instead, she said, “It’s so lovely.”
“Isn’t it? I’ve always thought so.” Miss Prescott slid the dish to Elsie and then began explaining how the rune held, and how spellbreaking could be applied to it, and how all spells were like an algebraic equation—
Algebraic . . . what? What nonsense. Elsie had always seen runes as knots to be untied, not numbers to calculate. Miss Prescott was making it far more complicated than it needed to be. The sum of this and the division of that to determine where to start . . . Elsie just tugged at the thing until she found a loose end. She highly doubted counting and equating would make the process any faster.
She’s still talking, she thought with dismay. She was overexplaining. Even Bacchus would know how to pull the spell apart at this point.
“Now, find the same rune in the book,” Miss Prescott said.
Trying not to grit her teeth, Elsie opened the book. She found the novice freezing rune right away, but acted like it took her a moment. “Here is it.”
“Very good. Now, I want you to study the rune, do the calculation, and tell me where you think you should start.”
Elsie resisted the urge to grumble. Top right, she knew. But she paced herself, her remaining patience slowly unraveling, and played along.
It took another quarter hour, a quarter hour, before Miss Prescott let her try breaking the rune. And again, Elsie purposefully made a mistake and started over before turning the ice back to water.
And then she had to do it again. And again. And again.
Elsie was going to lose her mind.
The lesson lasted two hours, with Bacchus hardening a tea cake and turning a coin translucent, all novice physical spells. Each and every time, Miss Prescott explained how it all worked, and each and every time, Elsie played the unknowing yet fascinated child, enough so that Miss Prescott praised her as she cleaned up her supplies. They bid farewell, and Elsie waited several minutes after the spellbreaker’s footsteps left the room before crossing to the far corner, where a tapestry of a field of sheep hung along the wall.
Bacchus followed. “Bravo,” he said.
“That was the most maddening thing I’ve ever had to do,” she hissed. “Even as a child, I would have thought it ridiculous.”
His lip quirked into a smile. “But you performed well.”
Elsie folded her arms, annoyed at the way her wrists were starting to itch. They hadn’t broken any large spells, but she’d unwoven more small ones than she could count. “She said years, Bacchus. That I’d be training for years. I can’t do this for years.”
“Perhaps you will be a very quick learner.”
“But I can’t.” She dropped her arms. “I can’t be a quick learner, Bacchus, because I can’t give them any reason to suspect.”
The smile faded. “I suppose that’s true.”
Sighing, Elsie looked out the window. There was a nice walking path down below, along with a garden sporting orange and pink flowers. Beyond that, Elsie knew, were the woods she had crept through the night Bacchus had caught her in an act of illegal spellbreaking. The assignment had been to break a spell on the servants’ door. She’d thought she was freeing them from an oppressive master, but in truth Merton had sent her there to strip the house of protections, probably with the intention of killing Bacchus. Thank God he’d stopped her. Thank God he’d given her a chance to redeem herself instead of turning her in to the authorities.
“But why did she want you?” she wondered aloud.
“Pardon?”
“When the Cowls—Merton—sent me to dis-spell the servants’ door.” She gave in and scratched her wrists. “You were only an advanced aspector, and a new arrival. You didn’t know her previously. So why was she after your opus?”
Leaning forward, Bacchus set his elbows on his knees. “Perhaps she wasn’t. The duke has an opus. Passed down from . . . his great uncle, I believe. A temporal one, in a locked glass case in the library. If Merton was collecting opuses to strengthen her hand, that might have been her target.”
Elsie nodded. “She must have seen it when she was visiting with Miss Ida.”
“Perhaps. All opuses are documented by the atheneums; she might have viewed the records there. We may never know for sure.”
She rolled her lips together, trying to imagine an alternate history to the one that had played out. Would she still be a pawn beneath Merton’s thumb if Bacchus hadn’t stopped her that day? She shivered at the thought.
“I’m glad you caught me.” She studied a vase on a nearby table, so she didn’t see his reaction. “Even more so that you let me barter my way out.”
He snorted, drawing Elsie’s eyes back. “You were certainly unexpected. And wily.”
She smiled at him.
He waited a beat before carefully saying, “The other option for your spellbreaking predicament is leaving.”
Elsie glanced at him. “What do you mean?”
“I mean we could hire a spellbreaking tutor in Barbados. Fudge the timeline. Wait a few years for your certification. Skip the rudimentary stuff.”
Elsie blinked. Barbados. She’d never been anywhere tropical. What would it be like to live there?
What would it be like for Bacchus to have her live there? With him? In truth, she’d never considered it. She’d never allowed herself the fancy of marrying Bacchus before the whole jail conundrum unfolded; she’d been sure he’d sail off without her and that would be that. And now . . . now she was so concerned about their ruse and about the possibility that he might hate her for it that she hadn’t considered anything beyond the marriage ceremony.
“We couldn’t.” She turned away. “Not while Merton is still at large.”
He nodded.
She rubbed the bridge of her nose, a sudden headache starting there. Now she was keeping him from his home, too. “Bacchus, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean—”
But the door opened just then, revealing the butler. “If Miss Camden is ready, the duchess would like to meet with her.”
Elsie threw an apologetic look to Bacchus. One she hoped read, I’m so sorry I dragged you into this. I’m so sorry I’m a burden. I’m so sorry you’re stuck with me.
But Bacchus said, “She is,” and took Elsie’s hand in his. Her stomach warmed in response. “I’ll see you when you’re done.”
He kissed the back of her hand, the press of his lips sending sparks like a fire spell up her arm. Her voice got lost somewhere between her throat and her tongue, so she simply nodded and allowed the butler to see her out, her hand pulling too slowly from Bacchus’s.
Once in the hallway, she checked the back of her hand for a spell; she could swear she felt something powerful pulsing against her skin, but there was nothing. She rubbed it, hoping to diffuse the aching that had begun just over her breastbone, but it was no use.
The duchess greeted her kindly and had her sit on a plush settee, an assortment of menus scattered across the table before them. “I wanted to secure everything and have the dinner right away, since I understand you two are in a hurry.” She winked. “No cousins this time.”
Voice still caught, Elsie nodded yet again.
“Oh, my dear”—the duchess reached toward her—“has something happened to your hand?”
Realizing she still clutched the appendage, Elsie dropped both hands to her lap. “No, nothing.” She flushed. “Nothing at all.”
The duchess had not been fibbing when she’d said she wanted to move things along, for the weekend following Elsie’s training with the spellbreaker, Bacchus and Elsie’s engagement dinner was served.